Monday, 30 December 2013

Temple Meads, today, 12.45 - 12.50pm.On the left, the 1pm Cross-Country train to Manchester Picadilly. Busy with passengers headed north to Birmingham and beyond. Drawn up alongside, the Direct Rail Services freight from Bridgwater. On board, two flasks of highly irradiated spent nuclear fuel rods from Hinkley Point, on their way to Sellafield where the plutonium will be extracted and stored to try to keep it out of the way. Full
international cast of Brief Encounter 2 includes:Direct Rail Services, the only publicly owned rail-freight company in the UK, being run by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Hinkley Point is owned by Electricite de France (EDF), who will aim to keep the waste flowing by building Hinkley Point C, with French and Chinese capital and generous operating subsidies from the UK government. Sellafield is, like the trains, in the ownership of the NDA, but is run by Nuclear Management Partners, a consortium of the URS Corporation (USA), AMEC (UK) and Areva (France). Emergency Planning services at Sellafield have been contracted out to those exemplars of integrity and good practice, SERCO (honest!). Emergency planning in Bristol is provided by the council's Civil Protection Unit. Cross Country is owned by Deutsche Bahn.

Unlike
the 1945 film, in which the head finally rules the heart, this 2013
release gives full rein to to the recklessness of the lead
characters. And sod the children!

Now showing at railway stations across Britain

Edited 31/12/13

Saturday, 21 December 2013

It's
three years since the Localism Bill was proudly unveiled by
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles. It would, he said

“herald a
ground-breaking shift in power to councils and communities
overturning decades of central government control and starting a new
era of people power “ .

There was a lot more of the same sort of
populist guff....

Six months earlier,
South Glos councillors had turned down an
application from SITA to build an incinerator – sorry,
waste-to-energy facility – sorry, Severnside Energy Recovery Centre
- at Hallen, three miles north of Avonmouth. It was much more than a
NIMBY decision; the area was already overcommitted to waste treatment
plant over and above the local need, and the West of England councils
were committed to a 'dispersal' strategy to reduce distances that
waste must be carried . [Since then, our councils, with that
unlikely Local Hero Gary Hopkins at the fore, have abandoned
incineration altogether and gone for more advanced technology, along
with then innovative food waste colections which are both proving
themselves well . Gary survived the Evening Post vilification
treatment. Lets hope Daniella Radice is equally resilient ].

But SITA now saw a
commercial opportunity to burn as much as half the industrial and
commercial waste produced in the West of England area. They appealed
to the Secretary of State against the South Glos. decision. In 2011
there was a planning inquiry, at which Mr Pickles' Inspector took the
SITA side. Pickles duly overturned the local councillors' decision.
So SITA got their permission, but, in the absence of the local
customers they'd described in their appeal, they still had nothing to give
investors the confidence to put up the cash.

Incinerators need an
assured flow of waste to burn – so the operators build in contract
terms so that their customers must pay dearly for any shortfall in supply.
Who cares that that obstructs any new measures to reduce waste or
divert materials for recycling? If local authorities, desperate to
avoid landfill taxes, commit to paying out £1.4 billion to burn
waste by open combustion in an incinerator for 25 years; well, it's a
proven if primitive technology, and financiers are keen to put up the
capital with such low risks and high prospective profits. That's
the theory.

Having had no more luck
selling disposal contracts to local businesses than it had with the
West of England local authorities, SITA cast its net wider. In
west London it found a consortium of 6 underperforming and
unambitious boroughs that were still sending high levels of waste to
landfill, and were pretty low down the recycling tables. A deal was done.
The incinerator would be built at Hallen as that champion of
localisation, Pickles, had ruled; the waste to feed it would now come
from the bins of Ealing, Brent, Hounslow, Richmond, Harrow, and
Hillingdon.

Of the incinerator
outputs, some would be the stack emissions, mostly drifting across
North Bristol; some would be 'bottom ash'; some would be highly
hazardous fly ash. Some of the heat would generate electricity for
the grid, but unless neighbouring customers could be found for the
bulk of the waste heat, that would just be dissipated to atmosphere.

Even given the deal,
the promise of a cast iron long-term contract, and the profits and
low risks that go with it, it seems that investors still didn't exactly
queue up waving their cheque books.

Enter the Green
Investment Bank. Set up about the same time as Pickles was banging
on about the virtues of small government and local decision making,
the GIB is supposed dip into its £3.8 billion to back 'green'
projects in offshore wind, energy efficiency (especially the 'green deal') , or waste
reduction/treatment where its “capital, knowledge and reputation
make the difference that enables a project to be successfully
financed“.

The GIB must be
struggling, what with investors pulling out of offshore wind and the
controversy over the big energy companies 'taxing' consumers with what
Cameron reportedly dismisses as 'green crap'. It's been putting
money into such bizarrely ungreen projects as converting Drax from
coal to biomass – wood pellets imported from the forest clearance in the USA. Apparently
that's a net reduction in local CO2 emissions, so it qualifies.

At Hallen, the GIB has
put £20 million into SERC. As their press release
put it, “GIB will invest £20 million of the senior debt alongside
a lending club of Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank,
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
and Mizuho Bank. Equity will be provided by SITA UK, Japan's ITOCHU
Corporation and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership.”

Thanks to them, and Mr
“where there's muck there's brass” Pickles, household waste with
plenty of recyclable materials still in it will be rail freighted
from London to be burned here, in an area where our more progressive
local authories have already found ways to recycle more, to pollute
less, and to keep it local.

Monday, 16 December 2013

The
announcement
that Bristol has recruited Max Wide to become the city's 'Strategic
Director for Business Change' raises some alarming questions. Not
so much about the new man, but on the agenda of those who chose to
recruit him.

It
doesn't look good. Mr Wide has history, inside and outside local
authorities. His CV shows he has 'worked with over 60 local
authorities delivering change programmes' either as employee, on
secondment from BT Local Government (the IT services arm of BT), or
with consultancies such as iMPOWER. There's one constant theme
running through the lot – outsourcing and privatisation.

Local
government watchers will be well aware of 'Broken Barnet', the London
borough whose political leadership has gone to unprecedented lengths
to cut services and farm out what's left to expensive and inefficient
'services' companies. Mr Wide was very deeply involved in making
it happen.

Then
there was Suffolk CountyCouncil,
with much the same agenda (since abandoned) . And the West Midlands
borough of Sandwell, where the management of Children's Services was
contracted out to Mr Wide's iMPOWER, led (oddly enough) by their
newest employee, Suffolk's director of Childrens Services. After
that it was Doncaster, where the government insisted that management
of the failing Children's Services be privatised – and iMPOWER got
the contract, at least until an 'independent' trust can take over.

So
that's what Max Wide is about. Privatisation and outsourcing is
what he does. And now he's been invited to take up a lucrative post
in Bristol.

But
the real story, surely, is to ask who chose him, and why... what's
the political programme he is to carry out?.

It's
inconceivable that his record as an arch-privatiser is not the
reason.

Sunday, 1 December 2013

It's
always going to be difficult when elected councillors are asked to
rule on planning applications from their own councils. When it
happens, they're expected to exercise the same dispassionate and
independent judgement as they apply to any other planning
application. That includes, in particular, avoiding any possible
charge that they have prejudged the decision.

That
was the situation on Wednesday, when Bristol City Council sought the
blessing of its own Development Control Comittee to construct the
in-city leg of the South Bristol Link Road, attracting heavy traffic
through Withywood and across Highridge Common to the A38. There it
joins the North Somerset leg, already approved for construction, and
primarily a route that opens up green belt for development while
clipping as much as a minute off airport journey times. (It will
also save busy commuters
the embarrassment and inconvenience of running over Barrow Gurney
villagers)

On
the day, the Bristol councillors voted the Withywood leg through by 8
votes to 2.

One
of the dissidents was the Greens' Daniella Radice, who found a host
of reasons (reinforced by the transparent failure of officers to
offer convincing answers to her questions) to vote against. The
other was Labour's Sean Beynon, who could not reconcile the undoubted
expense of a very dubious project with a cash-strapped council being forced
into harsh austerity measures by a ruthlessly ideological government
(my words, not Sean's!). It just doesn't add up.

Helen
Holland would surely have joined them – but as a long-standing and
very public objector to the project she did the decent thing and
stood down from the Committee – only to be replaced by a Labour
colleague, Afzhal Shah, who decided to go with the flow and approve
the road.

Of
course Helen should have invoked Abraham's Empty Heads Law. All she
needed was a simple statement saying “But
I wish to give an absolute assurance, and that assurance is, that I
come to this with a completely open mind. That must be done, and
that is what I shall do.” It worked for Peter Abraham
on the Ashton Vale Town Green debacle.

At
least two previously-declared cheerleaders for the Link Road weren't
troubled by any suspicion that they might have formed a view before
the meeting.

Both Claire Campion-Smith and Mark Wright had been
part of the LibDem Cabinet that unanimously agreed to bid for
government support for the road back in March 2010. Mark Wright
had, at that meeting, (and in comments on this blog) rehearsed some
of the same pro-road arguments as he repeated on Wednesday before
voting in favour of the new road.

Planning
applicants..... planning committees...... sometimes they just seem
to merge into one.

Wednesday, 20 November 2013

HorseWorld's
bid to build 125 houses - and a very big visitor centre - on green
belt land at Whitchurch village was roundly rejected by BaNES
development Control Committee today.

The
ailing charity had claimed that it must have the revenue from selling
off its current visitor centre for housing if it was to survive.
It's Big Idea was to use the development cash to build a bigger
better visitor centre. With similar amenities as the old centre,
but a bigger shop and and a bigger cafe and (wait for it) a new
250-seater Indoor Arena, it could up the visitor numbers by a third,
and get them to stay longer, while paying more per admission, and
spending more in the shop and in the cafe. Problem solved.

The
BaNES councillors weren't persuaded. The business plan didn't
convince them. They didn't like being told that only 10% of the
houses could be 'affordable'. The traffic figures suggested much
more congestion in an already congested area. The schools didn't
have the capacity. An hourly bus diverted to pass the site (except
evenings and Sundays) wouldn't make anyone abandon their cars. And
the new visitor centre would be a blot on the landscape. All in
all, there were no 'very special circumstances' that might make it ok
to permanently build over the Green Belt.

The
scheme's not dead though. BaNES themselves are looking at
releasing local Green Belt for development to meet their housing
targets. A proposal's just been floated to release a chunk of
HorseWorld land and neighbouring fields for 200 homes. If that's
agreed in the Core Strategy, HorseWorld will be back. And if BaNES
nominate other space for new homes, the developers will be queueing.

Hoofnote: 1st Dec.

A
curious feature of HorseWorld's application to build 125 houses on
the greenbelt with a minimum of 'affordable' dwellings among them was
the announcement to the BaNES planning committee that Bristol had
withdrawn its objection.

Not
so. It's true that Bristol's LibDem leader Tim Kent had been
lobbied beforehand by HorseWorld chief Mark Owen, who told him that
without the planning permission the ailing charity would go belly up.
And it's true that Tim, in turn, had lobbied the other south
Bristol councilors asking for their support in getting the Bristol
objection withdrawn. And it's true that Bristol did put in a
surprise 11th hour 'comment' to BaNES about the
application.

But
it didn't withdraw the objection. The secretive attempt by
Tim (and any henchpersons who might have been equally worried that
they might be portrayed as 'cruel to horses') to overturn the case
made by their own officers didn't withdraw anything, even though the
BaNES officers tried to make it look that way.

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Mayor
George is busy creating, not to mention advertising, a thousand 'Calmer Crescents' with the
roll-out of 20mph limits on the city's residential streets.

But
not in King Georges Road.

That
doesn't get the mayoral treatment, it gets an appropriately royal
going over from the West of England Partnership, egged on by the
motoring and business lobbies. The Madness of King Georges Road .

Today
it provides a path for around 500 vehicles a day – and it
rarely, if ever, sees a juggernaut. But as soon as the South
Bristol Link opens, everything changes – ten thousand 'car
equivalents' will pass these front doors each day.

Perhaps
a few will come from local businesses, rerouted from current journeys
down Hartcliffe Way or along Airport Road. But by far the majority
will be the traffic that already flows – or inches from standstill
to standstill - along Airport Road, heading for the A38 or for the
Cumberland Basin and the M5 at Avonmouth.

They'll
save a few seconds too – unless the road is a victim of its own
'success' and attracts enough new traffic to cancel out even that
small benefit for the driving public. As tends to happen in real
life.

A
little bit faster? A Whole Lot Worse

[The Planning Application for the South Bristol section of the Link is expected to be held on Wednesday27th November at City Hall (6pm). More on the 'NO to the South Bristol Link Road' pages]

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

The
planning decision had been clear, very popular, and democratically arrived at
by the elected members. Twice. But some time later, the unsuccessful party, driven by
self interest, chose to go against the will of the majority and
challenge the planners to get the decision overturned.

To
deal with this dissident minority, the council has to assemble a
legal team at great expense, headed by a barrister and drawing on
evidence from 'expert' professional witnesses. Likewise, the
self-interest group get themselves a QC plus a team of advisers. A
venue is hired for the hearing, which will be in public. There's
plenty to be said: this will take at least four full days, maybe
more.

But
the Bristol Post (in whose distribution area all this controversy is
happening) ignores it. No headlines about 'spitting in the face of
democracy' or 'holding Bristol to ransom'. There's no orchestrated
vilification of anyone. This time, it has nothing to do with
Sainsburys and only a very tenuous link with Rovers

Yesterday
was the first day of the appeal into BaNES' rejection of a bid to build over the green belt between Stockwood and Whitchurch village,
and it was held at the Bath City ground, Twerton Park, before a
Planning Inspector, Mike Robbins. He'll eventually report his
findings to that localisation hero and champion of the Green Belt,
Eric Pickles. Expect a final decision sometime in the spring.

At
some stage in the hearings, the Inspector will be doing a site visit.
He'll find it's been prepared for him... the usual rough grazing and
wildlife-rich hedgerows have been harshly cut back in anticipation,
so that it looks less like real countryside

The
first day saw introductions and explanations, opening statements from
the two sides, and an examination of the landscape impacts of the
proposed development. It was notable mostly for what his website
describes as “the pure theatre of his
cross-examination “ performed by the appellants' Anthony Crean
QC – a silk who's evidently in high demand, and usually from the
rich bad guys. It was uncomfortable theatre, too – he could switch
between bullying, patronising, warmth and anger almost within a
single sentence, in his efforts to confuse and break down his
witness. Not nice.

The hearings will run
from 10 till 5 or later for the rest of the week, and maybe stretch
into next week. They won't be looking at the scheme for 295 houses that originally got turned down by BaNES - this is about a revised 'concept plan' with a 'mere' 200 homes, which the developers have introduced since. It goes straight into the appeal/Pickles stage without first having being tested by local councillors.

Lunchbreak nostalgia.... Stockwood Pete's first visit to Twerton Park
since 1952 (when Southend United lost 3-1 to City in the cup)

[Meanwhile, Horseworld's application to build a new estate and visitor centre has been delayed while BaNES sorts out its housing allocations for the area. The Bristolian has plenty to say about that one]

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

Whittock Road green
space yesterday. By Christmas there should be a childrens
playground here.

About time too.
Apparently there used to be, in the wooded area far left, which is part of
the Open Space Local Nature Reserve, an Adventure Playground.
Very popular it was, by all accounts, with local youngsters and their
parents. It even had staff - and a phone line. But that was a long time ago,
when Stockwood was still young.

Five years ago, when
the council launched its Parks and Green Spaces Strategy, this was
one of the sites that a local group of residents wanted to prioritise
for a playground. We'd toured exemplar sites round the city, held workshops and dicussions, and finally came up with a string of positive suggestions that
somehow didn't materialise.

Three years later, out of the
blue, the Cabinet decided it could afford a £3.5 million spend on
the parks. No public consultation on this one, though –
councillors were invited to suggest what was wanted in their wards.
The Stockwood councillors' bid - probably on the back of an envelope - was for:

The Whittock Road
play area

Some signs, bins and
access barriers at Holsom Road

Benches or seats on the
Showering Road hill path

More rails and paths at
the Coots Meadow.

[South Bristol Sports
Club wanted half a million, too. Dunno what that was for... to
extend the car park, maybe?]

Stockwood got the first
of these, the playground – which ticks all the right boxes and, at
£100K, looks like a fair share of the £3.5 million split between 35
wards. This will fill a real gap in access to play for younger
children in this part of Stockwood.

I don't know who got
Hengrove's share, though. Their councillors didn't even put in a
bid.

Sunday, 15 September 2013

“a
classic example of trendy politics colliding with reality “ according to Gary Hopkins, but his Evening Post comment was more like a classic case of party point-scoring colliding with
reality. Maybe he feels his role in the LibDem group is being challenged

Gary was dismissing the proposal
brought to last Tuesday's council by the Green group – and, on the
day, roundly rejected by the other parties .

Had
the other councillors accepted it, and if broad support could be
shown from other councils and civic groups across the country, it
would have strengthened the chances of a request to government to let councils (if they
think fit) impose an 8.5% levy on the business rates payable by
certain large retailers on their patch – particularly supermarkets.
Government could not reject the suggestion out of hand – it must
first negotiate with the Local Government Association. All being
well, it would ultimately lead to the law makers allowing councils
this limited discretion to raise money for public use from some of
the most destructive of retailers.

Complicated,
that. Clearly too complicated for Gary's LibDems, for Labour, and,
of course, for the Tories. Too complicated for the council officers
charged with providing an objective report to the council. And far
too complicated for the Bristol Post.

Together,
they rewrote the story. It became, in their view, a proposal that
Bristol should now impose an 8.5% levy on all its big shops. That
would send out a message that Bristol is unfriendly to business. It
would induce all such shops to abandon their lucrative trade in
Bristol. The poor would be then unable to buy cheap food. Even if
the shops remained, the poor would pick up the tab at the tills.

Only
one small part of this gross distortion did have a rationale of
sorts. The council cannot at present distinguish between the
'comparison' retailers like B&Q or Harvey Nichols (not that the
poor would find they'd lost much there) and the prime target, the
huge and profitable food supermarket businesses.

But
anyone who'd looked at the real proposal (and 'Local Works', which
had prompted it) would know that legislation would be needed. That's
where a distinction between the business types could be written in.
It was a non-objection. And the rest was pure invention.

Fortunately,
not all councils, or parties, are as blinkered as Bristol's. In
Gloucester and in Torbay, it's been the LibDems who are making the
running (Gary please note). In Leeds, with an overwhelming Labour
majority, a similar proposal was passed with cross-party support. In
Liverpool, though, it was Labour who took the supermarkets' side and
killed it off

Of
course, there's no reason to think that the ill-informed debate at
Tuesday's meeting, with councillors voting en bloc along with their
parties, reflects public opinion. It doesn't even establish council
policy. It's still within the mayor's powers to sound out real
public opinion, and if he can show that people would like the option
of a levy, he can join other councils in seeking powers from
government. That's how the Sustainable Communities Act works – by
encouraging initiatives from the grass roots, to complement the usual
centralist 'top-down' legislative structures.

But
how to show George that Bristolians think councils should be given
this power?

Writing
to Mayor Ferguson is one option – you can draw on the information
on the Local Works pages.

Thursday, 12 September 2013

No,
this isn't about the Mem or Sainsburys. Strictly speaking, it's not
even about Bristol, because the site is just 'over the border' in
BaNES.

It's
the three fields that lie between Stockwood and Whitchurch village.
Normally used for grazing ponies, and criss-crossed by footpaths, the
fields were bought a few years back by Robert Hitchins Ltd, a
Cheltenham based developer specialising in commercial business parks.

Hitchins' ambitions for the three fields are a bit different, though. Up to
295 houses, pretty much filling up the remaining Green Belt open space between
the two settlements. No shops, no schools, no health centre,
no....... anything, really. Just an estate.

Twice
they've put in planning applications to Bath and North East Somerset's
development control committee. Twice, they've been unequivocally turned down,
because their proposals break most of the rules in the planning book.

Now
they're trying a new approach. They're appealing to the Planning
Inspectorate against the most recent refusal, in the hope that Mr
Pickles will override the considered views of local residents and
councillors. But at the same time they're introducing a slightly
scaled-down alternative version of the original proposal – with 200
houses instead of 295.

But this version will skip the local scrutiny that was enough to see off the
original plan. Instead, it will be for the government Planning
Inspector to look at the evidence and make a recommendation to the
boss – Eric Pickles, Localisation Hero.

Smart,
eh?

The
Planning Enquiry is expected next month. Deadline for comments is
15th September.

[added 19th Sept] The public inquiry is scheduled for 22nd October, 10am, at the Bath City F.C. ground, Twerton Park BA2 1DB

Monday, 9 September 2013

It arrived this morning! Thanks, April R, for getting us one of the
surplus 'Ping' tables up at the shops. First to use it - StockwoodPete
and BarberTom. For the time being, bats will be available from the
barbers or Steve's shop next door, or at the Library.

Friday, 6 September 2013

On Sunday, workers on behalf of the council were scurrying round the city's bus stops posting the new timetables that First Bus had introduced that very day. In some back office, similar changes had being made to on-line information, like the Travel Plus real-time pages and the Traveline South-West pages.

Other essential changes to be made at public expense will be to update the city bus map, though for some considerable time yet passengers will have to make do with the outdated one (published as recently as July)

Not too bad for those with web access, then. But a dead loss for those without. First Bus, the architects and decision makers behind the changes, had promised to distribute paper copies of the new timetables, but none were to be seen at the usual outlets – the Bus Station, Temple Meads, and the Tourist Information Centre (the last two checked today, Thursday!)

Most Stockwood bus users will have been surprised to see, instead of the familiar 54 bus, a newcomer with a 2 on the front plying the same route. (In the 48 hours since, several 54's were spotted – presumably last week's buses running late). The number change seems to be merely cosmetic, but it does mean quite disproportionate change in travel information services. The new, more frequent, timetable is billed as providing an evenly spaced 5-minute frequency (together with the 1 Broomhill – Cribbs Causeway service) on the shared route between Temple Meads and the White Tree roundabout on the Downs. Seeing will be believing.But these minutiae are as nothing compared with the impact on Sneyd Park (which is, of course, where Peter Abraham comes in to the story). There, First have the effrontery to introduce a route change on the outbound no.40 route moving it a street away from its present course along the narrow Julian Road – where, they say, 'inconsiderate parking' affects the punctuality and reliability of services.

Cue outrage from Cllr Abraham, faithfully relayed by the Post. Consultation on these changes was seriously limited. (He's right on that). Never mind that the changes on this particular route will provide late buses between Bristol and Avonmouth (the lack of which Cllr A has complained of volubly – and rightly – before). Never mind that its purpose is to get buses running to time despite the best efforts of local car drivers to delay them.Oddly, it's been left to Alderman Brenda Hugill, ex Labour councillor for Lawrence Hill, to try to get the Mayor to explain First's failure to consult the public over the route change at Sneyd Park. Cllr Abraham has bigger fish to fry at Tuesday's full council meeting; he's moving a motion of no confidence in First. It reads:“This Council has ‘no confidence’ in the ability of First to run an affordable, comprehensive and reliable bus service for the benefit of the people of Bristol. Accordingly, as a matter of urgency, we call upon the Mayor and his Cabinet to consider every option available to them to remedy this situation, and finally deliver the kind of quality public transport provision this city deserves.”

Few could disagree with the sentiment, or the evidence – for as long as I can remember, successive council transport bosses have been struggling to get any significant co-operation from First. But it is, as the BBC's Robin Markwell notes

“a purely symbolic gesture by Bristol's Tories as the council does not control the buses “

Perhaps if the motion was phrased to put pressure on government to change the law that gives First it's disproportionate and self-serving powers, it would be a bit more relevant to the real problem.

As it is, it's mere grandstanding, as self-serving as anything that the bus company does.

[The 'golden motion' on Tuesday, to be moved by Tess Green, is much more constructive – it's to make sure council contracts don't go to companies operating employment blacklists. Might be interesting to see what the Tory line is* on that.....]

(added 10th Sept)* No surprises there. Tory councillors, including our two from Stockwood, followed like sheep behind their leader, who opposed the Green motion, dismissing it as a 'rentamotion' but otherwise offering no opinion on the companies who operate illegal blacklists, some of them being Tory funders. Fortunately the rest of the council were a bit more principled and the motion was carried comfortably.

Meanwhile....The 1/2 timetable is out now on paper. The delay must have been to get the proofreading right.

In fact the name 'South Bristol Link' is attributable to
Tessa, who advised in an internal 2006 briefing (now sadly removed
from the Business West website) about what was then called the South
Bristol Ring Road:

"Think
about a new name for the road – it has a serious image problem!
South Bristol Link Road, Bedminster Bypass – anything to get away
from the idea of a ring road – “ring roads take people through
places, not to them”.

The
advice was heeded; even the word 'road' was removed from the project.
On the ground, though, the road signs weren't changed. Now, the
new road is even named in the North Somerset / Bristol joint working
agreement as the 'SOUTH BRISTOL BUS LINK', although well under 1% of
its users will be using buses or more sustainable transport.

On
its present course, the Ring Road follows a circuitous line by way of
the Parson Street gyratory and Winterstoke Road before it releases
its load onto the A370, north towards the Portway or southwest into
Somerset. At its eastern end, the options are east on the A4 to Bath or continuing round the Avon Ring Road, or north to the St Philips Causeway for the M32 and the M4.

If the SBL is built, ring road traffic might get through
South Bristol a few seconds quicker, and there'll be more of it. But
it will still be a Ring Road.

........

The
same Business West briefing acknowledged the lack of evidence for a
new road doing anything to improve business development in South
Bristol:

"The
argument for the ring road suggests it will have a beneficial impact
in access to existing employment sites (and may even open up new). If
this is the case then these need to be clearly identified. If Cater
Road and Hawkfield Business Parks will benefit, where is the
evidence? Need facts and figures to support the economic development
arguments particularly as more recent evidence on new road provision
would not support this case.”

7
years later, and free to express a view outside Business West, Tessa
still has doubts on this score:

“Only
time will tell whether or not such a road will create jobs and
encourage business to locate in the area, but all my instincts tell
me that providing improved road access to South Bristol is only a
very minor part of the problem. Businesses will still not locate
there if the office/business space is not attractive, the right
skills are not available locally and the local environment doesn’t
provide what their staff need. “

Surely,
the business lobby should be making that case – the new road is an
expensive, damaging, irrelevancy.

Thursday, 29 August 2013

(or... Why have the figures been drastically changed ?)

There've been some changes made. Back in 2009, when all the intensive work was being done, consultants Mott MacDonald came up with figures for the likely traffic impacts of the South Bristol Link.

Among all the stats, it was revealed that the road would draw enough traffic onto the new alignment to push up the numbers at both ends. At Brunel Way, as it passes Bower Ashton, another 6,000 vehicles a day would funnel in with the 35,000 that pack it now; along Hengrove Way/Airport Road, there'd be an extra 5,000 on top of the 16,500 that we see today. Frightening, but not really surprising.

Meanwhile, advised Mott MacDonald's experts, the Bus Rapid Transit (sorry, I must learn to call it 'Metrobus') would carry 3,000 people a day along the leg of its journey between Hartcliffe and the A38.

But that was in the olden days. Planning Committees reading the latest reports will find the goal posts have been adjusted and traffic projections rounded right down – and not directly comparable because daily figures aren't given, only the hourly peak and the 'interpeak average'. So on Brunel Way, the new road is now claimed to have no significant effect on traffic levels approaching the Cumberland Basin in the morning rush. Back at Hengrove, the planning committee will be told, morning peak traffic will actually drop (!) once the same road becomes a new ring route through South Bristol.

Just as the traffic numbers are now being played down, it turns out that the SBL Metrobus (you know, the one that's going to be good enough to get people out of their cars) will also carry far less passengers – certainly a tiny number compared with the forecasts on which the scheme was developed. This link (figs 7-12) shows that for most of the running hours, and much of the route, throughout the 15 year study, hourly passenger numbers won't even reach double figures, let alone the 3,000 a day plus on which the whole SBL project was sold.

Conspiracy or cock-up? It needed high passenger figures to justify the scheme in the first place. With that out of the way, and funding secured, low passenger figures can justify dropping the expensive, uneconomic bus element of BRT altogether, leaving just the highway, a new ring road, and a stimulus for developing the Green Belt. Job done.

Of course, I made that last bit up. It couldn't possibly be true. After all, we're going to be European Green Capital.

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

For years, badgers have been digging and enlarging their sett on the 'Whitchurch Way' cycle path with a multitude of entrances either side of the tarmac. Now the path has collapsed into one of the interlinking tunnels.The city council, quite properly, won't fix the path till they get advice about protecting the badgers. Down the road in Somerset, though, they're preparing to shoot the creatures, healthy or not, in a (probably ineffective) attempt to reduce the incidence of bovine TB in cattle. There's a good dispassionate summary of the issue in this Science Media Centre briefingApart from cattle and badgers, the disease can also be carried and transmitted by deer, horses, cats and dogs. Bikes too, for all I know. All of them frequent this stretch of the path, which has direct links into dairy and beef farms.

So doesn't the logic of the cull suggest that dogs, cats, horses and cyclists should be shot too?

Saturday, 24 August 2013

The
mass of documents
published as part of the planning application to build the South
Bristol Link must baffle most of us who want to submit an informed
comment. And every day it's being added to with more letters of
support or objection. I've just put my own objection in; they're still
being accepted.

To ease the burden, the
links below are for the key 'Transport Assessment', which is part of
the Environment Assessment and unhelpfully scattered in bits randomly around the
official documents list.

Especially illuminating are the predicted peak hour traffic flows – demonstrating, for instance, that once the road-builders have gone, residents of quiet, leafy King Georges Road will get over a thousand vehicles passing through in the morning rush. Not to mention those three (yes, THREE) passengers shared between half a dozen spanking new Metrobuses.

Still, every cloud..... Over at Barrow Gurney, they already get a thousand vehicles through in the morning peak, so they're naturally very keen to see the new road built. As one resident says,

"Villages like Barrow Gurney have been severely damaged with both the buildings and the community smashed by increasing traffic levels. In places the carriageway is only 14 feet wide with stone walls and no pavement but cars expect to be able to pass each other irrespective of any villagers trying to access village amenities such as the pub, village hall, playground and shop as well as visit friends. It is an attractive village with most of the houses in the centre listed but this narrow winding road carries around 15,000 cars a day, every day with no respite at weekends and bank holidays. The children and old people in the village need to be able to walk in safety but cars make no concession for pedestrians. The last village appraisal revealed that 15% of residents had been struck by cars in the village centre so it is not surprising that 85% of villagers felt unsafe walking in the village. Such a situation is unacceptable.”

The SBL predictions suggest that the traffic along Barrow Lane will be halved when the new link opens. Only a partial solution, then - maybe only 7.5% of residents will be struck by cars. Still, there's at least one of the offending drivers who's conscience stricken - and looks forward to a clearer run. He writes:

“I
write as a North Somerset resident, as a chartered civil engineer and
transport planner,
and as Chairman of Bristol Chamber of Commerce's Transport Group,
which I represent on
the Mayor of Bristol's Transport Advisers Panel.

I
moved to Bristol in 1984. At the time, the construction of the road
that is now known as the South Bristol
Link was part of the strategic plan for the area. I believed then,
and continue to believe, that
the construction of the road will be of major benefit, both by
improving access to the communities
in South Bristol and by providing a bypass to remove through traffic
from Barrow Gurney.

I
moved to Wrington in 1987. Since then, for 23 of the intervening
years, I have commuted to Bristol
via the A38, through Barrow Gurney and along the Long Ashton Bypass.
Despite peak period
hold ups in Barrow Gurney, this is the quickest route between home
and work and takes my journey
past fewer homes than any other option, meaning that my commute
causes the least nuisance
to others. That same route is preferred for many journeys between
Bristol Airport and Bristol.
Consequently, with increased air travel, it has become steadily
busier and the traffic on it must
cause significant harm to the quality of life of residents in Barrow
Gurney.

I
wish to express my wholehearted support for the scheme both because
of my self interest, in that it
will improve my journey to work, and because it will provide so many
wider benefits for North Somerset
and south Bristol.”

Now
there's a saint! Wherever would we be without transport planners like this?

About this Blog

This one's from the little known Bristolian outpost of Stockwood, first settled by city expats back in the fifties. Leafy, open, and close to the countryside.... until they grub up the Green Belt and open spaces to build an 'urban extension'.

Written by an adoptive Stockwoodsman, arrived from the wild north-east back in 2004, this blog sets out to look at Stockwood and Bristol issues, mostly from a green perspective